Do You Even Earphone Bro?

There was a time, not too long ago, when people cared about the quality of music they were listening to. I'm not talking about the music genre, I mean the actual fidelity of the audio hitting their eardrums. A live band, orchestra or choir performing in great acoustics is the best thing ever, and is unequalled by anything.

With the advent of recorded music, people shunned it for being low quality, amongst other things. Fast-forward to digital music. People shunned that for being too compressed and not warm enough.

These are my actual Apple Airpods, complete with ear wax, sorry

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Then came consumer earphones. Audiophiles wouldn't be caught dead using a pair of those, again for quality concerns. Why would you listen to a nice Bob Marley or Nirvana album at such low quality? You wouldn't hear the tambourines or subtle drum taps - just the heavy bass rhythms and a portion of the vocals.

Earphones eventually became acceptable as their quality improved. Just then, we got compressed music such as MP3 and WMA. . Goodness me, did that cause a stir in the audiophile community. It also gave the music companies a real headache because of the new piracy horizons they brought.

We eventually got various lossless digital formats like FLAC, which were much larger in size, but preserved the pre-compression quality. This was kind of the sweet spot for me - a compromise between digital and quality.

Streaming music such as Apple Music and Spotify became popular and brought back low quality, compressed audio. At this point, a new generation of listeners had matured and for them, this was the norm. Gone was the bickering on Internet forums about which earphones were more 'faithful' to the original sound, which was better gold or silver audio jacks, yadi, yada. The debate had moved to which digital library was larger - Apple or Spotify? As if one could ever listen to more than a few thousand albums (in totality) in one's entire lifetime.

Then we have today, where a ridiculous percentage of people now listen to music on YouTube and, believe this or not, FaceBook! Quality be damned.

Privacy be damned !

No, I'm not referring to the fact that both Google and FaceBook are actively collecting data on the type of music you listen to, and selling the information to third parties. That's not the point of this post. I mean the fact that people don't seem to think they need earphones to listen to music in public anymore, or to do anything for that matter.

It has sadly become socially acceptable to turn on your phone and watch videos, listen to music or speak to someone in loud speaker mode. What's going on?! Everywhere I go now, on the train, in a cafe, at the bus stop, EVERYWHERE! There's that person in my earshot talking to his friend in full volume. It has to be full volume of course, because it's in public and they have to overcome the public ambient noise, and other people blaring their phones too.

It's like and audio arms race !

Whatever happened to the personal in "personal audio player"? Am I being an old man? When did this behaviour become acceptable socially? Where are the 'looks' and 'side-eyes' I used to get when I accidentally answered a call in speaker mode?

The social aspect apart, even though it's a serious one, are people no longer concerned with the quality of what they are listening to? Personally I love to be transported to a backstreet studio in Kingston, Jamaica when I listen to Bob Marley or Jimmy Cliff. I want to feel as though I'm at the Royal Opera House when I listen to the London Symphony Orchestra. I sure as heck have some respect for the people sitting next to me and don't want to DJ their lunch break.

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Disclaimer: Dear audiophiles, I am aware that Apple Airpods are rubbish for listening to music. I do own a sick pair of Etymotic earphones :)

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Peace and Love ✌🏿
Adé

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